I am glad there is a bulk feature, but the default is still an extra step that is not necessary 99% of the time for my team. I like it defaulting to Everyone (which is our majority case) and changing it if it is special. Not changing it if it is normal.

How would that work / function with several people adding articles at the same time across the same Help Center? Would it get confusing if the default kept changing? What if they hit save the same time? I would figure the latest "save", but would want to make sure that doesn't break anything else. Also, would it be across help centers or individual based? If it is individual based I could see that helping a lot more. We have a Help Center for our clients and one for our staff, we are constantly going back and forth on them and adding / modifying content. Also, would the default be based on addition permissions or just any generic "save" action?

This may be a little more complicated, but what about a way to set the default yourself (i.e. the admins) per Help Center? Then if one client needs it one way they can have it, and a different client could have it a different way - whatever fit their needs.

We also want the default visibility to go back to "Everyone". What I'm finding now is that, out of habit, I create articles without looking at the visibility setting, and they are not being published so that our users can see them. 75% of our articles are for "everyone". I have had to make sure I go in each day and look at the new articles created and see if any "Agents & Mangers" articles really should be set to "Everyone". Thank you.

This change has been a huge pain for my team. We have many people from different teams who write articles, who now all need to be consistently reminded that this needs to be changed with every new one they create. We're sending out release notes that no one can see. We're promoting articles in email campaigns that no one can access. We have to go through and change multiple checklists for our processes, but even with that the likelihood that we'll miss something is high. You've added an extra step to every single article we make. If you won't change it back to Everyone as the default across the board, please at least let each of your customers set what their default should be, because this is a huge waste of our energy to have to worry about. It is a really awful decision to make this change with no option to customize.

Hey everybody and thanks for the feedback! During the research process it became obvious to us that there are two competing views on this: companies that want everything hidden by default and companies that want articles to be available to everyone.

We then decided to go with the more restricted default visibility.

Looks like we have to give a bit more flexibility on this, so right now we're looking at defaulting to the last used user segment.

@Bogdon if there were clearly two competing views, I can't fathom why both weren't considered for a solution before making such a universal change that results in so much additional work. It's a monumental oversight in my opinion.

I also agree with comments from others that defaulting to the same restriction as the last article could be confusing as we have multiple people writing articles across different teams, and sometimes may segment who sees them if it's for a beta project or something. We really don't want this.

Why can't the default just be set at a either a Guide, Category, or Section level with the option to modify individual articles as needed?

I also agree with Elizabeth; it should be a configurable option under the guide setting!

Forcing half of your customers to operate one way because the other half of your customers requested something is NOT the solution. Instead, providing your customers with options so that they can customize their environment to suit their needs is the way to go.

Please either make article visibility a configurable default setting or make it remember (in the browser) the last used visibility. This is very annoying to have to remember to flip it to Everyone every time.

Most of the replies to this thread appear to be related to the need to post articles publicly by default. I'm on the other side where we should minimize exposure to articles until they are ready to public consumption and I wanted to share an option that you can use today to help you setup some of this customization today if you are on certain plans.

Just chiming in to add that my company would really like to be able to control the visibility default as well. 95% of our articles should be visible to everyone, and it's a pain to remind our writers to check that setting every time.

How about taking the approach of a file server. Have what is being created inherit from its parent. This kinda gives everyone what they want... If you always make your content available to everyone then inherently it will be. If, you usually control the visibility then it will inherit the control you have put on the Category or Section it lives in.

Personally, my help center is divided by a number of my large clients (each client has a Category) with some Categories available to everyone. So, by default, I would want any Articles or Sections I am working on to inherit the same permissions of its parent Section or Category it lives in.

We also want the default visibility to go back to "Everyone". We have several "agents" adding content to our site - and out of habit, we create articles without looking at the visibility setting. This means the articles are being published so that our users can't see them, and we have to backtrack and change the visibility settings. 80% of our articles are for "Everyone". Please give Agents control of the default visibility setting and save our small not-for-profit organisation's limited resources! Thank you.